SoftBank Signals a Pause After Losses
The most committed AI backer says it will watch for a while, which is the week’s most important marginal change.
SoftBank is considering pulling back from aggressive AI spending after reporting a large loss, with chief financial officer Yoshimitsu Goto acknowledging that discussions now centre on watching developments for a period, including exposure to OpenAI. Two figures circulate and they do not reconcile: Chinese outlets describe a $7 billion quarterly loss, while Japanese reporting describes a net loss of ¥768 billion for the six months to September, a swing from roughly ¥3 trillion of profit a year earlier, driven partly by changes to US data-centre plans. The shares have nearly halved in a month. SoftBank’s cumulative OpenAI commitment is around ¥10 trillion, and on 9 November it announced an initial ¥150 billion for AI infrastructure in Malaysia.